Word: mcmartins
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While the two leads can scarcely dispel the powerful memory of the 1958 Lunt-Fontanne production, they establish their own interpretations with unstrained validity. Rachel Roberts brings a commandingly icy meanness to Clara while hinting at a lost tenderness. In recent seasons, John McMartin has established himself as an actor of distinctive range. He has played the disenchanted author in Follies, the skeptical servant Sganarelle in Moliere's Don Juan, and the mask-divided soul Dion Anthony in O'Neill's The Great God Brown. Now, as the hero of The Visit, he is initially bland, wistfully...
...other hand, Shaw was not quite capable of creating a wise fool as captivatingly human as Sganarelle. John McMartin plays this role to droll perfection, both physically and psychologically. His face and his body operate on alternating currents as he is by turns appalled, amazed and fascinated by Don Juan's behavior. As the Don, Paul Hecht is the compleat cynic and as seductive as the hell he courts...
...Great God Brown, currently being revived by Manhattan's New Phoenix Company, is a compendium of these aspects of the lesser O'Neill. It is a drama of split personality. The protagonists, Dion Anthony (John McMartin) and William Brown (John Glover), are physically two but psychically one. The play is a duel of opposing forces within the same being. Anthony stands for Art untrammeled by mundane affairs; Brown for the etiolated Babbittry of Commerce. But Dion is himself divided, his first name standing for Dionysius, the creative-erotic life force, and his last name Anthony for "a saint...
While iron-stomached culture hawks might salivate in the presence of such gaudy symbols, it only makes the cast's eternal fight so much more valiant. They have no choices but to flash around their stylized plastic masks and they do so with considerable cleverness. Only John McMartin as Dion Anthony has difficulty finessing his way through the surrealistic script. The New Phoenix's leading lady. Katherine Helmond, does well in the role of Margaret, and Marilyn Sokol is fine as Cybel, although offhand it's difficult to picture how an Earth Mother should be. Best of all is John...
...once nostalgic, disappointed and good natured. It is also perhaps the best orchestrated song in the history of musicals. Jonathan Tunick has done a spectacular job of orchestration throughout, but "The Girlds Upstairs" tops everything. This song and "Too Many Mornings," a love duct sung by John McMartin and Dorothy Collins, are the best things on the record. Sondheim's lyrics are really magnificent, tender and clever at the same time, and the songs always belong to the characters who sing them. Time called him "Broadway's supreme lyricist" and it is beginning to seem like an obvious statement...